memes

Yesss! I fucken guessed that at the first mention of Tanri. I'm so impressed with myself right now lol. (I don't mean to gloat but I just wanted to have this moment.)

One of the big joys of people speaking a turkic language is recognizing their words in other turkic languages, it's a game often played. A lot of turkish people will look at Tajikistan, see Tashkent and be like . It's especially funny if a word has a taken on a different meaning in another language but its plain to see how it got that.

Did you know that the flag of Kazakhstan apparently has Tengriist symbolism?

I had no clue, what do they mean?

Anyway, that's super interesting to hear how there's a divergence in terms. I wonder if there's a degree of chauvinism in how Tanri is applied given that it sorta carries the implication that the people who use the term are heathens?

Ah, I didn't explain that very well. Tanri can be applied to the god of any religion, but Allah is the name of the islamic god. For example an arabic -> turkish translation of the shahada would read like "There is no Tanri other than Allah". So Allah is Tanri but being the only true God no other Tanri can be Allah. But if you then refer to your God not as Allah (his name) but as Tanri, you might be outing yourself as non-muslim. It reads very confusing I realise, but I think the confusion is mainly that we in the (christian) west refer to our god as "God". It's like calling a person "Person", so sometimes you might be referring to a person, but sometimes you're talking about the Person. If I talked about you as a person that has some valid contexts, but in other context not using your name would raise eyebrows. Similar to that.

There is some chauvinism in putting your Gods name in a special place, but for straight translation it wouldn't make sense to translate a non-muslims call to god with "Allah" since they're not praying to Allah.

What do you reckon the chances are that the Grey Wolves want to force the Alevis into adopting the term Tanri?

I mean they dont want them to exist, regardless of the term used. They call themselves Grey Wolves after Asena and seek out to create a great turkish ethnonation across central asia but with Sunni Islam as its religion.

There are a few tengrist oddballs in the turkish far-right though like an absolute mirror-copy of the nazi's who want to reestablish germanic gods like Odin. They strongly identify with the mongolian roots of Turkey and a lot of their sinophobia comes from "Turks = Mongols good, Chinese = Mongols enemy bad". The split in the turkish far-right between muslims (and within those into different sects) and tengrists is often a friction point and the only reason they are banding together is because they want to RETVRN to the ottoman days. Tengrists are like a weird footnote to that though, very few and only accepted insofar as they help the cause.

That buddhist tangent was a good read thanks for that, I have nothing to add to it unfortunately since I know nothing about buddhism or tengrism.